Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 291
(JNS) - The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee approved on Wednesday the Cabinet's decision to extend the nationwide emergency situation until April 14 amid the ongoing war with Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah. The Israel Defense Forces' Home Front Command guidelines currently restrict educational and work activities, as well as gatherings of more than 50 people outdoors and 100 people indoors. National forests, parks, hiking trails and roadside recreation areas across the country have...
Several people were lightly wounded in an Iranian missile barrage on Tuesday morning, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service was cited as saying, as local media reported damage to buildings at impact sites in the Tel Aviv area. MDA said its teams were dispatched to search several locations in the central region following the barrage and that further updates would be issued. Police said Tel Aviv District officers, Border Police and bomb disposal experts were handling “several scenes of falling munitions parts,” and urged the public to fo...
(JNS) — At the 14th annual commemoration ceremony on Thursday for the murder of four French Jews at a Jewish school in Toulouse, participants booed representatives of the far-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, forcing them to leave. The incident occurred at the city’s Capitole square, where hundreds had gathered for speeches and a wreath-laying tribute, Sud Radio reported. When LFI lawmakers François Piquemal and Hadrien Clouet laid their wreath, dozens of people began booing them, calling them “far-left fascists” and “antisemites,” and shouting...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday night struck regime sites in northern Iran for the first time since the start of "Operation Roaring Lion" against the Islamic Republic on Feb. 28, according to the Israeli military. Strikes were carried out by the Israeli Air Force, at the guidance of the Israeli Navy and IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, according to an initial statement, which did not include additional details. The IDF also struck over 200 regime targets in central and...
(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday wished the “brave people of Iran” a Happy Nowruz, the Persian new year, which falls on the March equinox, the first day of Spring. “To the brave people of Iran, I wish you, as I do every year, a happy holiday season, beginning with the Festival of Lights. It signifies the age old belief of the Iranian people that light will triumph over darkness, that good will triumph over evil,” Netanyahu said, referring to the Festival of Fire, which falls on the Wednesday before the Persian n...
(JNS) - Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of a hostage murdered in Gaza, was selected to feature in USA Today's "2026 Women of the Year" list, in which she recounted how her personal grief is touching tens of thousands of strangers worldwide. "I'm trying very hard to own and greet the grief that I feel every single day, in a way of actually thinking of it as a privilege. I had this beautiful son. He was and he is a blessing," she wrote. Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, was held hostage by...
(JNS)- Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, of Dearborn Heights, drove a truck into the largest Reform temple in North America and opened fire on security guards, injuring one, in West Bloomfield, Mich., a suburb some 25 miles northwest of Detroit. The terrorist is confirmed dead, the Oakland County Sheriff's Office said. "At some point during the gunfight, Ghazali suffers a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head," said Jennifer Runyan, FBI Detroit's special agent in charge. "He has no previous...
(JNS) — Israel’s flag carrier, El Al, announced Sunday that it will launch six non-stop flights to New York that started last Monday to help thousands of U.S. citizens who have been stranded in the country since the outbreak of the Iran war to return home. The flights, which are designated exclusively for American citizens as part of an agreement with the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, will operate at full capacity and will not be subject to the current 100-passenger limit per outbound flight. It was not immediately cle...
(JNS) — The only offer extended to Iran was “unconditional surrender,” Israeli Knesset speaker Amir Ohana, a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said on Tuesday. Ohana was responding to a post in which Ghalibaf said that the Islamic Republic was no longer seeking to negotiate a truce with the United States and Israel. “Absolutely, we are not seeking a ceasefire; we believe we must strike the aggressor in the mouth so that it learns a lesson and never again even thinks of aggressing against our dear Iran...
(JNS) — The Samaria Regional Council on Wednesday morning erected the first residential structures on Mount Ebal, around 10 months after Israel’s Cabinet approved the establishment of a new community at the site. Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, together with the Amana settlement movement, worked overnight to establish the village after receiving formal Interior Ministry approval last month, Dagan said. “This morning, we’re privileged to feel the wings of history beating,” he said. “To make history together here by establishin...
About one-third of $4,965,000 in security funding that Massachusetts gave to 167 nonprofits in the state went to Jewish organizations, including synagogues, according to a JNS analysis. Of the listed nonprofits, 55 (about 33%) were Jewish, and they received $1,606,876 (about 32%) of the funding, which came from the Commonwealth Nonprofit Security Grant Program and the Commonwealth Nonprofit Security Personnel Grant Program. In addition to the 55, Brandeis University, which states that it is “animated by a set of values that are rooted in Jewish...
(JNS) — Israel’s elimination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was made possible by using Tehran’s traffic cameras to spy on the movements of those close to the cleric. Israeli intelligence “hacked” nearly all traffic cameras in Tehran over a period of years, encrypting the footage and transmitting it to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, according to The Financial Times, which first reported the story, citing two sources familiar with the operation. One camera in particular provided a strategic vantage point, enabling analysts...
(JNS) — Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah of Iran and a leader of the opposition against the Islamic Republic, on Tuesday called on ethnic minorities to unite against the regime, saying it was nearing collapse. “You are an inseparable part of Iran’s historical and cultural fabric—communities that have always stood as guardians of our territorial integrity and the dignity and honor of our nation,” the exiled crown prince said in a statement addressed to the nation’s minorities. However, “from the very first days of the Islamic Repub...
(JNS) - The head of Uganda's military said on Thursday that his country is set to unveil a statue of IDF Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was killed in action in Uganda during a counter-terrorism operation that rescued more than 100 hostages almost 50 years ago. "In order to strengthen our close blood relations with Israel, we shall soon unveil a statue to Yoni Netanyahu at the exact spot he was killed at Entebbe Airport," tweeted...
(JNS) - Nine people were killed and over two dozen wounded by an Iranian missile impact in Beit Shemesh on Sunday, according to Israel's Magen David Adom emergency medical service. According to Channel 12 News, a direct hit on a residential building caused the structure to collapse. Israel Police Jerusalem District Cmdr. Avshalom Peled told local media that the casualties were believed to have been inside a shelter when it took a direct hit from a ballistic missile. "We know from past incidents...
(JNS) — The U.S. embassy in Israel on Friday opened consular services for Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria for the first time. The one-day consular pop-up operation took place in Efrat, in the Gush Etzion region of Judea. An additional one is expected to open soon in Beitar Illit, in the Binyamin region of Samaria, according to the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Israel Ganz, head of the Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, described the move as “historic jus...
(JNS) — The Supreme Planning Council of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration on Thursday approved the construction of more than 1,300 housing units in the western Samaria community of Kedumim. The 1,338 homes in the planned Nahalat Esther neighborhood will more than double the size of Kedumim, which currently has some 4,850 residents living in around 1,050 households, Israel National News reported. The roughly 60-acre neighborhood will feature a green valley at its center. In total, the Kedumim Local Council is planning 3,000 hom...
(JNS) — The Israel Defense Forces killed several terrorists in separate incidents in the northern and southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the military said. In the south, Israeli troops identified several armed terrorists who emerged from the underground terror infrastructure in eastern Rafah, in violation of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement on Friday. Shortly thereafter, “the troops alongside the Israeli Air Force struck and eliminated some of the terrorists in order to remove the threat,” the IDF said. I...
(JNS) - The Israel Defense Forces military campaign, "Operation Roaring Lion," against the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue "until we achieve all our objectives," IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin told reporters on Saturday night. "We went to war-to this operation-to remove a real, existential threat to the State of Israel," he stated at the press briefing, adding: "It will take as long as it takes; it will continue until we achieve all our objectives." Asked by local media how...
(JNS) — Israeli Air Force jets have flown hundreds of sorties since achieving air superiority over Tehran, the Israel Defense Forces said on Monday morning. “The air force continues to strike across Iran and neutralize [missile] launchers,” the Israel Defense Forces stated on X, sharing footage of fighter jets returning after attacking targets in the Islamic Republic. On Sunday night, the IDF announced that it carried out more than 700 sorties after the IAF “cleared the way to Tehran” within 24 hours of the start of “Operation Roaring Lio...
(JNS) - Gumbo and Bandit, the dogs of U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his wife, dressed up ahead of the Jewish holiday of Purim, which was last week. In a video published on the U.S. ambassador's social media accounts on Thursday, Mike and Janet Huckabee dressed Gumbo and Bandit in the Israeli and American flag, respectively, as well as blue and red hats. "Two thousand three hundred years ago, God orchestrated through Queen Esther and Mordechai the salvation of the Jewish people and victory...
(JNS) — Nearly 15 hours after Jessica Tisch, the New York City Police Department commissioner, decried attacks on police officers in Washington Square Park, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that it was just "kids throwing snowballs." "The NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops. I want to be very clear: The behavior depicted is disgraceful, and it is criminal," Tisch stated at 9:55 p.m. on Monday. "Our detectives are investigating this matter." At 11:46 a.m. on Tuesday, M...
(JNS) — Holocaust survivor Charlotte Roth, 96, finalized her immigration to Israel on Wednesday in Tel Aviv, nearly eight decades after being liberated from Nazi captivity. Roth, born in Czechoslovakia, survived Auschwitz and a death march after being deported with her family in 1944. She later rebuilt her life in a Displaced Persons camp, married and immigrated to the United States before raising four children in Cleveland, Ohio. Accompanied by five generations of descendants, Roth completed her immigration process with the help of Nefesh B...
(JNS) — A senior Cabinet minister in Germany who was the main government representative at the Berlin International Film Festival, aka the Berlinale, on Sunday, left the event in protest after a director accused Israel of perpetrating genocide. Carsten Schneider, the federal minister for the environment, nature conservation, climate protection and nuclear safety, represents the center-left Social Democratic Party. He left the Berlinale gala event during a speech by Syrian filmmaker Abdallah Alkhatib, who identifies as a Palestinian, the dpa n...
(JNS) — The population of Israeli villages along the southern border has grown by 3,000 residents since Oct. 7, 2023, even as five communities are still waiting to return home, a Knesset committee was told on Monday. Aviad Friedman, head of the Tekuma Authority that is responsible for rebuilding the Gaza border towns destroyed in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre, described the population growth as “an exciting Zionist event” during a hearing at the Knesset State Control Committee. “The number of residents in the region has grown from some 62,000...
